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tl;dr

A list of writings I’ve read ordered by a score of how influential I found them. For each I’ve added a quick “Too Long Didn’t Read” style summary.

The Stranger Albert Camus
A story of a man faced with absurdity in it's purest form and how he navigates it in simple terms
Lila Robert M. Pirsig
The sequel to the motorcycle one, trying to build an actual working system out of Quality
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics Carlo Rovelli
Eighty pages that get from Einstein to quantum gravity without a single equation
The Machine Stops E. M. Forster
A man in 1909 describing video calls, on demand lectures and a species that has forgotten how to go outside
Death's End Cixin Liu
The bill for every decision the first two books managed to put off, paid in full
Designing Data-Intensive Applications Martin Kleppmann
The book that explains what your database is actually doing and why it occasionally lies to you
The Prince Niccolò Machiavelli
A user's guide to power, with morality filed under tools
The Three-Body Problem Cixin Liu
First contact, except the invitation was sent by someone who'd given up on humanity entirely
Emotional Intelligence Daniel Goleman
A compelling argument that how one manages emotions matters more to life's outcomes than raw intellectual ability
No Country for Old Men Cormac McCarthy
A man takes a case of money he shouldn't have, and what comes after him doesn't negotiate
The Dark Forest Cixin Liu
What you do when the enemy is four hundred years out and you can't keep a single secret
The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus
The essay The Stranger was the story of, starting from whether life is worth living at all
The Earth Chronicles Zecharia Sitchin
Sumerian tablets read as a literal record of visitors who came here to mine gold
Prisoners of Geography Tim Marshall
Ten maps arguing that leaders matter far less than rivers, mountains and where the ports are
Learning Go Jon Bodner
Idiomatic Go rather than a syntax tour, which is the harder and more useful book to write
The Plague Albert Camus
A town sealed off and a doctor who keeps working, mostly because the alternative is nothing
The Checklist Manifesto Atul Gawande
Why expertise keeps failing at things it already knows, and how a bit of paper fixes it
Dopamine Nation Anna Lembke
A psychiatrist explains why more pleasure keeps making us feel worse, and what to do about it
The Road Cormac McCarthy
A father, a son, a shopping trolley, and no explanation of what happened
Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari
A unique perspective on the evolution of the human species, exploring the most beneficial characteristics
Why I Am So Clever Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche on diet, climate and what to read, which turns out to be the same subject as how to be yourself
REWORK Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson
A business book that mostly argues against doing the things business books tell you to do
Atomic Habits James Clear
A systematic breakdown of how small repeated behaviours compound into who you become